New York – A new online tool from the American National Standards Institute provides free “read-only” access to certain voluntary consensus standards that have been incorporated by reference into federal regulations.

ANSI said its IBR Portal is an effort to make the standards “reasonably available” to people seeking to follow federal rules that reference them. Making all voluntary standards free would take revenue away from standards-developing organizations, ANSI stated in a press release.

The portal provides access to standards from 13 domestic and international groups, including the International Organization for Standardization and the American Welding Society, and ANSI hopes more organizations will agree to participate. The program is designed to prevent users from downloading, printing or taking screenshots of the material.